Any progress they made would only be running almost dead before the wind.
However, he was long dead before the setting of this story.
"Because she might be dead before you got back to her."
That she be dead before they cut her in pieces?
I could well be dead before those doors close again.
Harry told me he would be dead before 40, like the other men in his family.
She may even have been dead before the explosion, had you thought of that?
I had rather see him dead before me, than the husband of such a woman.
The truth is, Jane had been living as though he were dead for several years before that.
You would all, I think, be dead before the next dawn.